


A Reprieve From Battle (And a Time To Find Herself)

by onstraysod



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Introspection, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 20:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13174302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: During a lull in battle, Ahsoka Tano has an introspective moment.





	A Reprieve From Battle (And a Time To Find Herself)

They had taken the high ground to the west of the city, sending those few battle droids who had escaped their blades and the cannons of the gunships shuffling away as quickly as their pneumatic joints could bend, back towards the Separatist position near the city’s landing field. Now the divisions were regrouping, the generals consulting on strategy, the troopers catching their breath and checking their gear, awaiting the new orders that would carry them down into the narrow alleyways and up over the roofs of the dwellings where the citizens huddled, awaiting their liberation.

Ahsoka clipped her lightsabers back on her belt and stretched, raising her arms high above her head, twisting at the waist in both directions. She plopped down, cross-legged, on a patch of blue grass in the shadow of an AT-TE where Masters Skywalker and Kenobi conferred with Masters Windu and Koon, and she closed her eyes, drawing deep breaths into her lungs. The winds that swept the high ridge had almost cleared the air of the smoke and ozone of battle, and Ahsoka could smell the scent of the trees growing on the heights behind their position, the clean crispness of the snow on the peaks, the rich moist earth beneath her. The Force circulated inside her body with her blood, stirred by each new breath, and it steadied her, calming every tensed nerve and muscle, easing her back into an awareness of herself. Ahsoka smiled.

In the midst of battle she was raw instinct and action, a crouching, spinning, leaping weapon, her body as much a deadly tool as the gleaming blades she wielded in a blur of bright motion. But in a reprieve like this one, she had the space and focus to become Ahsoka again. Not that the spinning, leaping weapon she became in battle was not her — it was. But it was only one part. Ahsoka was more than a nimble fighter, and in moments of peace — however fleeting — she remembered it.

She was a teenager, barely more than a child, full of laughter and mischief and wide-eyed wonder about every world she visited.

She was a Togruta, separated physically from her home world and her clan, but aligned with both in spirit; tied to her culture and traditions in ways she could feel if not quite articulate.

She was a female, conscious of the changes in her body and her heart with each passing year, yearning for the nurturing peace and stillness that lay somewhere beyond the chaos of battle.

She was a friend and a pupil to her master, whose signature in the Force was a warm and comforting presence in her awareness at all times, as familiar to her now as her own skin. She was a leader and an ally to the clones like Rex, who were in turn a sure and steady bulwark at her back. She was a defender and a guardian to the people of this planet and countless others, who looked to her dazzling blades for protection and liberation.

And yet, she was something else besides…

Something she could feel but not name. Something she could touch inside herself in moments of meditation but could not quite understand. She had glimpsed it once, this other thing she was, on Mortis, but could no longer recall the exact shape of it. Maybe it was not something she was now or ever had been, but something _she was yet to be_.

What she knew for certain was that she was part of the Force, and the Force _was her_. It was the fluid dance of her limbs, the sharpness of her gaze, the immediacy of her reactions. It breathed in her, grew in her, dreamt in her; it wound around her and stretched out from her like the branches of a mighty wroshyr tree. It dwelt in the spaces between her heartbeats and it **was** her heart: a living, glowing fire burning deep within her breast, propelling her ever onward.

She was ready. Ahsoka opened her eyes again, exhaling, and she leapt to her feet with a grin. She was Ahsoka Tano — warrior, child, student, woman, leader — _Jedi_. And she was fearless. She looked forward without flinching: to the next battle, to the eventual peace, and to whatever came after that.

All would be as the Force willed it, after all.


End file.
